Comment by Prandom_returns@lemm.ee on ChatGPT has caused a massive drop in demand for online digital freelancers — here is what you can do to protect yourself

If current “AI” is taking one’s job as a graphics designer, it means that one isn’t a very good graphics designer.

Good GFX designers are expensive. AI is cheap. Welcome to capitalism.

Yeah, quality is expensive, welcome to Earth.

That’s not capitalism, that’s economics. It’s the way it should be.

I invest half of my life’s time studying and honing my skill. I will charge accordingly for it.

You missed the point. Where I made it rather clear why AI is chosen over GFX designers. Why buy good and expensive, when you can have mediocre and dirt cheap? That’s capitalism.

You’ve made it clear, but it seems you’re unaware of how the design industry works.

You cannot beat a Nurburgring lap record with a slow, cheap car. You CAN do laps, but “doing laps” is not what the high-end companies want & need.

You cannot replace quality, expensive work with cheap work and expect the same result. Otherwise, companies would hire 1st-year-dirt-cheap freelancers, or outsource to fivr. Companies that do that are mostly starting themselves or are so cheap, that they are of no value to the designer.

Stop the “AI” dooming that’s only beneficial to the prople who sell it.

None of the highly successful people I know within the industry is worried about the generative garbage, because it’s all that is.

Did you land your gigs at high end companies right out of uni?

No, I ate shit the first few years after uni, making coffee and changing texts on visuals.

Are you truimg to imply that a crappy image generator that can barely make text and has trouble generating the appropriate amount of fingers has taken over THE ENTIRE visual design industry?

We probably live on different planets.

Most clients don’t understand art or graphics to begin with, I guess. They just wanted someone good at Illustrator.

Most clients don’t understand art or graphics to begin with, I guess.

That means shit prompts and shit visuals.

They just wanted someone good at Illustrator.

Well, that’s where the “not very good at graphics design” comes in. If you’re only hired because “you know illustrator”, that says more about you than the client.

Your attitude says more about you than your supposed knowledge does, if you think AI won’t have a catastrophic impact on the value of your work, of the artistry of what you do in relationship to being valued by society, you are an utter fool.

When it happens, I’ll let you know.

I think more likely answer is that most businesses are cheap and a mediocre image generated by AI is good enough vs paying a human to make a really good one.

Almost, the likeliest answer is that CEOs and the ruling class have no fucking clue whether AI can be good enough to replace graphic designers but they also know that this was never the point, AI is a weapon of class warfare, and a nuclear one at that.

Even if the entire industry crashes and decides it does actually have to hire lots of human artists back, those artists will be hired as alternatives to cheap AI and graphic design will have permanently been dissected and destroyed as a decent career for hardworking people who may or may not be the most talented people in the world.

If you (as in anybody reading this not who I am responding too) think this isn’t happening you need to shut your mouth trap and go read a book about the Industrial Revolution not written by an apologist for the ruling class.

This is something people always miss in these discussions. A graphic designer working for a medium marketing company is replaceable with a Stable Diffusion or Midjourney, because there, quality is not really that important. They work on quantity and “AI” is much more “efficient” in creating the quantity. That too even without paying for stock photos.

High end jobs will always be there in every profession. But the vast majority of the jobs in a sector do not belong to the “high end” category. That is where the job loss is going to happen. Not for Beeple Crap level artists.

You can only cut out so many people in so many industries before the economy collapses. I’d like to see what it would look like if like 30% of people lost their careers to AI. Maybe there would finally be a push for UBI and/or stronger tax laws for large corporations.

I would question the efficiency claim. Uber and the like claimed incredible market dominance, driving local food delivery and taxi services out of business. They’re only now really being forced to find profitability.

I wonder if AI is going to be similar. The powerful models right now, as I understand it, have ludicrous power requirements. I don’t know their balance sheets, but in the current race to market share, I’m skeptical that most of these services are in the green.

What that ultimately says about the future I don’t really know. Like it could be we reach some point where the models get better, or more specialized, or something and profit arrive. Or maybe theres a point of diminishing returns where the profit just can’t be made, and once the hype falls off (and investors stop clamoring for AI) these companies will ask what they’re getting for the money spent.

(And of course I could just be straight up wrong about profits today not being there.)

They are absolutely eating the real costs in order to gain market share. I suspect that there’s going to be a mad dash to rehire humans when the bill comes due and the VCs want profits.

Replacing a human with any form of tech has been a long standing practice. Usually in this scenario the profitability or the efficiency takes a known pattern. Unfortunately what you said is the exact way the market always operated in the past, and will be operating in the future.

The general pattern is a new tech is invented or a new opportunity is identified, then a bunch of companies get into the market as competing entities. They offer competing prices to customers in an attempt to gain market dominance.

But the problem starts when low profit drives some companies to a situation where either they have to go bust or dissolve the wing, or sell the company to a competitor. Usually after this point a dominant company will emerge in a market segment. Then the monopolies are created. After this point companies either increase the price or exploit customers to get more money, and thereby start making profits. This has been the exact pattern in tech industries for several decades.

In the case of AI also, this is why companies are racing to capture market dominance. Early adopters always get a small advantage and help them get prominence in the segment.

High-end businesses that need high-quality design would never use output from an “AI”.

If they do, that means they don’t take design seriously, and are fine with “not a very good graphics designer”. So my point stands, IMO.

If they do, that means they don’t take design seriously

The diploma mill MBAs that run the place don’t know (or care) what good design is.

They only know how to look at business costs as “cutting into our profit”.

Yeah, not a high-end business.

These days they’re aware that good marketing & design = $$$.

I could not care less what low-end suits decide, they’re not what brings designers money.

More “AI” garbage means that good designs will have an easier time crystalising.

Yeah, not a high-end business.

You are incredibly naive.

Nah, I’ve just been in the industry long enough to not be scared of competition. Quality is something that a lot of well-paying businesses very much appreciate.

A crappy visual generator is on-par with an intern, at best.

The people who are startled the most, probably have never actually done design large-scale.

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